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CLIMATE CHANGE

Two NOAA officers sailing the Arctic last year in the Fairweather, a hydrographic survey vessel.Credit NOAA

Responding to diminishing ice in the Arctic, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration updates its charting of nautical corridors off the Alaska coast. “As multi-year sea ice continues to disappear, vessel traffic in the Arctic is on the rise,” an admiral notes. [NOAA]

Advocates for action on climate change in Puerto Rico have a mascot: the coquí, a tiny tree frog.

Named for its high-pitched calls, a familiar evening serenade, the coquí is the generic name for some 14 species of frog, some only half an inch long, that long inhabited the island archipelago. Three of the species have gone extinct since the 1970s because of a warming climate and habitat loss in the densely populated territory; scientists fear that the remaining 14 will also disappear unless the authorities take quick action to preserve more land and to slow rising temperatures.

Yet, as Rachel Nuwer reported here on Wednesday, the principal threat to frogs like the coquís is the fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, an organism that causes fatal skin infections in the frogs and that becomes more prevalent as temperatures rise.

“Climate change is making things better for the fungus and worse for amphibians,” said Rafael Joglar, a professor of biology at the University of Puerto Rico and an expert on coquis and other amphibians. “The fungus infects the skin of the frogs and will eventually kill them.”

Loss of the coquís would be unsettling for Puerto Rico, where the frogs’ image can be found on everything from T-shirts to key rings to rock engravings. Because the frogs feed on mosquitoes, the decline of the tiny amphibians will mean that humans will be more exposed to mosquito-borne diseases like malaria and dengue fever, Dr. Joglar said.Read more…

The incidence of chytrid fungal disease in North America. Researchers are working to chart occurrences of the fungus, a threat to many amphibian species around the globe.Credit Bd-Maps

One of the first things that epidemiologists do when studying a new outbreak of disease is to map its occurrence. From there, they try to tease out patterns related to the malady’s cause and prevalence, and begin working on solutions to quell it.

For tracking sick frogs, toads and salamanders, it turns out that the same principle applies. Researchers have assembled an interactive map documenting the global emergence of Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, the amphibian chytrid fungal disease that is blazing through populations of water-dwelling animals around the world.

Scientists are still struggling to understand this plague, regarding it as a major threat to the survival of many amphibian species. The research team hopes that the map will bring together fragmented research efforts and present an overarching picture of the problem.

Deanna Olson, a research ecologist at the Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest Research Station in Oregon, and her colleagues are ebullient over their success in assembling a world network of scientists and managers that are interested in conducting real-time surveillance. “This is allowing us to track what we know about this disease, which has been implicated in mass mortality events as well as some extinctions at the global scale,” she said.Read more…

In what might prove to be his last public appearance as energy secretary, Steven Chu delivered a pep talk of sorts on Wednesday to hundreds of entrepreneurs, researchers and others at the ARPA-E conference on energy innovation in suburban Maryland.

Toward the outset, Dr. Chu, a key creator of ARPA-E, which stands for the Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy, ticked off a list of historical predictions about new technology that turned out to be wrong.

Among them was one by the head of the British post office in 1878, two years after Alexander Graham Bell received a patent on the telephone. “The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not,” the postal official reportedly said. “We have plenty of messenger boys.’’Read more…

Nestlé scored highest on climate change and water policies, while Unilever led the way on treatment of small farmers. Overall scores were middling at best.Credit Oxfam International

The antipoverty group Oxfam has come up with a scorecard that evaluates the impact that the supply chains of behemoth food companies have on water consumption, labor and wages, greenhouse gas emissions and nutrition.

The goal of the scorecard, called “Behind the Brands,” is to motivate consumers to pressure companies like Nestlé, Kellogg and Mars to improve their policies on land and water use and the treatment of small farmers, among other things, and to reduce waste and greenhouse gas emissions.

“Customer choice helps these companies build brand loyalty and value, which helps them build the bottom line,” said Raymond C. Offenheiser, president of Oxfam America. “These supply chains are what connects the consumer to the farmer in the field, and there is an increasing interest in that.”

Apparel and mining companies have moved to increase the transparency of their supply chains, improving their practices in the process, Mr. Offenheiser said. But food companies are notably opaque when it comes to disclosing how they obtain the ingredients for the food they sell.Read more…

Thousands of inventors, engineers and entrepreneurs gathered in a suburban Washington convention center on Monday for the annual three-day meeting of Arpa-E, the Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy. It wasn’t quite the Oscars. At the registration desk, attendees received a goody bag that included a report on clean energy from the Pew Charitable Trusts and a refrigerator magnet that showed the periodic table of the elements.

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Credit ARPA-E

But the breakout sessions held true to Arpa-E’s tradition: there were lots of swing-for-the-fence ideas. These included finding a high-efficiency, low-cost way to turn surplus natural gas into liquid fuel for cars and trucks, and identifying something to burn other than hydrocarbons so that carbon dioxide is not one of the byproducts.

One researcher proposed burning aluminum instead. One challenge is that the ashes, or oxidized metal, would be hard to recycle back into aluminum without big releases of carbon dioxide.Read more…

A field of cereals burning near the town of Voronezh, Russia, after weeks of searingheat and virtually no rain in the summer of 2010.Credit Associated Press

As has often been noted here on the Green blog, one of the biggest uncertainties humanity faces regarding climate change is the potential effect on the world’s food supply.

If there is a risk that global warming and related changes could hit much sooner and much harder than scientists are expecting, agriculture could be the crucial realm where that occurs. In fact, we have already entered an era of sharply higher global food prices, with climate change as one of the likely causal factors.

A new paper from researchers associated with Tufts University puts the overall risk in perspective. It is billed as a working paper, meaning it has not gone through formal scientific review, but it strikes me as worth highlighting nevertheless. The findings pretty closely match the conclusions presented in some of my reporting from 2011.

The authors, Frank Ackerman and Elizabeth A. Stanton, point out that in the 1990s, research suggested that climate change would be fairly benign for agriculture. The first few degrees of warming would help agriculture expand in chilly regions, the thinking went, and the rising level of atmospheric carbon dioxide would act as plant fertilizer, increasing crop yields. More recent science has cast sharp doubt on some of those conclusions. Read more…

Grazing and biodiversity: an adult male caribou in Greenland.Credit Eric Post/Pennsylvania State University

In the unending quest for effective ways of adapting to climate change, it seems that musk ox and caribou may have some of the answers.

According to a study published this week, the large herbivores that inhabit Greenland and other regions in the far north can play an important role in maintaining biodiversity in a warming climate.

In the course of a 10-year Arctic field experiment, the Penn State biologist Eric Post found that the animals held back the growth of some plant species that would otherwise be likely to dominate the local ecosystem as temperatures rose.

Beginning in 2002, Dr. Post simulated a warmer environment in the remote community of Kangerlussuaq, Greenland, by building 8,600-square-foot “warming chambers” – cone-shaped hollow structures in which the animals were allowed to graze on the plants that grew under the new conditions.

The musk ox and caribou were excluded from separate areas of the same size that were also subjected to a rise in temperature of 1.5 to 3 degrees Celsius (2.7 to 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit), a level of warming that scientists project will occur over the next century.Read more…

When I first met the NASA climate researcher Gavin Schmidt a few years ago, we discussed the proliferation of material on the Internet attacking mainstream climate science. I asked him whether he thought climate contrarians were flirting with conspiracy theory in their views.

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Credit WND Books

“Flirting?” he said. “No. They’ve already had conspiracy theory out on a hot date, and now it’s the morning after and they’re sitting up in bed, having coffee.”

I happened to recall that conversation the other day as I read the latest chapter of a remarkable back-and-forth between mainstream researchers and climate contrarians.

It all started last year, when a social scientist named Stephan Lewandowsky, of the University of Western Australia, and two colleagues published a rather provocative paper. It was based on an anonymous Internet survey of the readers of climate blogs. Read more…

A satellite with new, far more powerful technology for monitoring the Earth’s changing climate, water supplies and agriculture will reach its orbit within two months, NASA says. [NASA]

Rain forest demolition, genetically modified ingredients, child labor: things to keep in mind when purchasing a box of Valentine’s Day chocolates for a loved one. [Grist]

The all-electric 2013 Honda Fit, first introduced in California and Oregon last summer, is coming to select East Coast markets this month. [Honda]

A quixotic map of a future high-speed rail network for the United States elicits an overwhelming response. The goal of the map, its creator at Berkeley says, was more about bridging regional and urban-rural divides than reducing airport congestion. [The Guardian]

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Imagine viewing the countryside while relaxing on a 14-hour train trip from Los Angeles to Chicago.Credit Alfred Twu

Daryl Hannah was among those handcuffed and arrested on Wednesday in Lafayette Park in Washington during a protest against the Keystone XL pipeline project.Credit Getty Images

Four dozen environmental activists succeeded in getting themselves arrested outside the White House on Wednesday afternoon to draw attention to their demand that President Obama reject construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada.

Julian Bond, the civil rights leader; Daryl Hannah, the actress; Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club; Robert F. Kennedy Jr., president of the Waterkeeper Alliance; Bill McKibben, a longtime climate change campaigner; and James Hansen, a prominent climate scientist, were the celebrity faces of the arrestees, who zip-tied themselves to the White House fence and defied police orders to leave.

They and about 40 others were hauled away in police vans, charged with failure to disperse and obey lawful orders, and released on $100 bond each.

The Sierra Club, whose board authorized participation in acts of civil disobedience for the first time in the group’s 120-year history, organized the protest. Mr. Brune said that Mr. Obama had made forceful and eloquent statements about the need to address climate change, including remarks in Tuesday night’s State of the Union address, and now needed to stop the pipeline to signal his seriousness.Read more…

President Obama called for increased research to wean the country from oil dependence in his State of the Union address on Tuesday night.Credit European Pressphoto Agency

In his State of the Union message on Tuesday night, President Obama proposed the creation of an “Energy Security Trust” to find alternatives to dependence on oil for the nation’s transportation needs. The trust would be financed from revenue from oil and gas royalties that the federal government collects from companies that drill on federal land.

As is customary in State of the Union speeches, Mr. Obama did not give much detail, but plenty of other voices were happy to fill in the blanks on Wednesday morning. The idea has obvious political appeal – using oil revenues to wean the country from oil – but it has a way to go before reaching fruition.

Securing America’s Future Energy, or SAFE, a group comprising retired admirals and generals and chief executives of major American companies, pointed out that it had recommended such a fund in December. Finding a stable long-term source of revenue would help address the need for funds for research and development, the group said.

Among the details unmentioned in Mr. Obama’s speech was money. SAFE said that $500 million would be a nice number but that it would settle for anywhere from $200 million to $500 million a year. Royalty revenues last year were around $5 billion, the group said.

But nobody seems clear on how much is spent on research on transportation alternatives now. Last year the government spent about $2.9 billion on energy research and development, SAFE said, but that sum includes nontransportation uses.

4:13 p.m. | Updated
A White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Wednesday that the administration would ask Congress to direct $200 million a year to the fund for 10 years. That would be added to a existing research and development program at the Energy Department; in recent years the administration has been asking for $300 million for that program. While the money would be raised from oil and gas revenues and be spent to reduce oil use, the official said, some of it would be spent to increase natural gas use in vehicles.

Bracing for a big one: students walking home after school was dismissed early on Friday in Pelham, N.Y. Heavy winds will combine with snowfall to create blizzard conditions in much of the Northeast, forecasters say.Credit Reuters

A re-examination of the interrelationships between weather patterns like Friday’s impending blizzard in the Northeast, greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. [Union of Concerned Scientists]

The London Olympics, Super Bowl and, now, Sunday night’s Grammy Awards: this year, the entire awards presentation will be greener than ever, and powered solely by renewable energy. [N.R.D.C. Switchboard]

Steven Chu, the departing energy secretary, plays along with a satire suggesting that he was involved in an illicit romp with a solar panel. “I just want everyone to know that my decision not to serve a second term as energy secretary has absolutely nothing to do with allegations made in this week’s edition of the Onion,” he writes on his Facebook page. [CBS News]

Exelon’s chief executive warns that the “excessive amount of wind power” being rolled out across the nation could lead to the “unintended consequence” of shutting down nuclear plants. [The Chicago Tribune]

The smattering of orange dust that marks the seasonal arrival of the coffee rust fungus, Hemileia vastatrix, has long been commonplace. But this year, one of the worst outbreaks of the rust in memory is under way in Mexico and Central America, and Dr. Vandermeer has witnessed the die-off of 9 percent of the trees in a sample plot at his Mexican research plantation.

What is normally a lush green field now consists of “little sticks sticking out of the ground,” he said.

The outbreak threatens to almost halve the 2013-14 coffee harvests in Guatemala, Colombia, Honduras and Costa Rica; Guatemela’s coffee industry association has already declared a state of emergency. Meanwhile, debate persists about the cause of the spread and how to arrest it.

Each year, an estimated 46 percent of the population is responsible for 77 percent of discretionary spending in the United States. To strengthen individual buying power, a Santa Barbara-based entrepreneur and philanthropist has proposed a new social enterprise to finance climate change solutions, among other social justice and humanitarian issues.

The Big Idea, a nonprofit corporation founded by the entrepreneur Chris Norton and initially backed by his $11 million donation, is loosely modeled after the A.A.R.P., the membership organization that promotes the interests of retired people. The aim is to unify individuals with common interests.

Acting as a green intermediary, The Big Idea bundles purchases of regular services like like cellphone plans and auto insurance — what Mr. Norton calls “low-engagement products” — to achieve social impact. By harnessing group buying power, members achieve a cost savings and share it with social justice and environmental action groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council, Environmental Defense Fund and 350.org, among others.

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How are climate change, scarcer resources, population growth and other challenges reshaping society? From science to business to politics to living, our reporters track the high-stakes pursuit of a greener globe in a dialogue with experts and readers.